Saturday, September 9, 2017

Arsenius of Trigolo, Capuchin priest Founder of the Sisters of Mary Most Holy Consolatrix Milan, October 7, 2017

Prot. N. 00694/17

Ignatian rigor and
Franciscan simplicity

Dear
Brothers,
May the Lord give you peace.

1. It is my joy to present to you a new
blessed: Br. Arsenius of Trigolo from the Province of San Carlo (Lombardy). A
first, quick glance at his life gives the impression of someone who was always
changing, almost of someone unstable. In fact, though first a diocesan priest
at a certain point he became a Jesuit and then finally a Capuchin. His
spirituality was that of the nineteenth century, but let us be careful not to
stop at the exterior, the superficial. It is essential that we look for the man
who stands behind exterior things. There we will find someone who seeks God
above all things, who wants to do only his will. The events of his life are
many, seeming to shine differently depending on the light, liminal, or even
contradictory, but it is true that he never lost sight of his compass: Your will be done!

So, what can a Capuchin of yesterday say to us
Capuchin friars of today? What is the strongest word or message that Blessed
Arsenius of Trigolo can say to the Order today? Though he spent only seven years
among us, the last seven years of his life, he can certainly say something to
us that is worth hearing.

The life of Blessed Arsenius can be summarized
in his own prophetic reflection recorded in his Spiritual Notes: “Arsenius, you must not content yourself with
having given up the world, possessions, family […], you must detach yourself
from everything else, even heart and feeling, for otherwise what good is this?
It’s worth nothing to seem to be a religious to the world but not really to be
one with God.” It is the tension that was with him his whole life in his
seeking to be perfect as our heavenly
Father is perfect. (Mt 5:48)

2. Blessed Arsenius’s shifting lifestyle, with
continuous changes even of his state of life, can be interpreted as a symptom
of a weak personality, of someone discontent, or of an unsettled dreamer
looking for a stability that was not to be found. Reading his life with
attention, however, one discovers rather a personality that knew how to accept
the continual uprooting that God was working in order to guide him to
perfection. To change his state of life as he did, leaving behind dear ones and
relationships that had been built up with much effort and to depart from places
and the certainties for which he had persevered, highlights how he was always
making himself available not only for seeking God’s will, but also for how God
would shape and work on him in his acceptance of the difficulties of concrete
circumstances without ever getting discouraged or giving up on the will of God.

3. Let us recall his life

Blessed Arsenius was born in Trigolo in the
Italian region of Lombardy on June 13, 1849, the fifth of twelve children. He
was baptized six days later in the church of St. Benedict in Trigolo and given
the name Giuseppe. His parents, Glicerio Migliavacca and Annunciata Stumia were
sincere believers. They owned an inn and a bread shop with which they were able
to support the large family. While still a boy, Giuseppe already wanted to
serve the Lord in the ordained ministry, and so entered the seminary in Cremona
where he took the course of studies from 1863 to 1873, a time when the cultural
and political climate was conditioned by unhappy relations between the Kingdom
of Italy and the Papal States.

At the age of fourteen, Giuseppe’s choice to
become a priest was surely not a comfortable one nor a way to set himself up in
life, but was a courageous, mature, and determined choice of one who did not
fear the cultural and social environment around him. It is enough to recall
that when Geremia Bonomelli arrived in Cremona as bishop in December 1871, a
year after the Breach of Porta Pia* and a
good four years after the death of the previous bishop, Antonio Novasconi, he
found only thirty-two seminarians, a scant number for that time, and one of
these was our Blessed.

4. The aspiration of the young Giuseppe was
clear and determined: to be a holy priest! Thus he writes in his Spiritual Notes: “Oh, how much more good
could be done for the people if the priest was more perfect: knowledge is good
and very necessary—priests can’t be ordained without it—but if knowledge is not
shaken up by true piety and perfection, it puffs up the spirit and makes for
pride. True piety makes us know our nothingness and our misery, and that we
have everything from God and thus everything refers back to him. Without true
piety one becomes an obstacle to God.”

He was not, however, a dreamer, but knew his
limits and therefore knew well the urgent and continual need for the grace of
God in support of his determination to follow Jesus and to be a priest for
Jesus and in Jesus.

Piety, study, grace, and humility were and are
the cornerstones of a holy priesthood. Piety and study cannot be separated
“because one is the soul of the other.” Grace and humility cannot be separated
“because one is the soul of the other.” A priest like many, we could say with
‘ordinary’ gifts, but in precisely this characteristic—being ‘ordinary’—he had
the rare gift of an industrious and humble fidelity to his ministry. To the
best of his ability Blessed Arsenius communicated nothing else but the grace of
God and his Love without hiding the Gospel and above all without running after
the approval of the world or hiding the mystery of the foolishness and scandal
of the Cross.

5. On March 21, 1874 the future Blessed
Arsenius was ordained priest and sent to be assistant to the pastor in Paderno
di Ossolaro (today Padreno Ponchielli) and then to Cassano d’Adda. It was there
that he probably met for the first time the young Giuseppina (Pasqualina)
Fumagalli, then a sister of the French Congregation of Notre Dame du Bon
Secours, who would make many difficulties for him.

Blessed Arsenius lived his priesthood aware of
having been called by grace, and only by grace, giving his whole self to the
love God, celebrating deeply the mysteries of salvation and at the same time
not lacking in love of neighbor or fraternal charity. The choice to be a priest
seemed to be well-founded and he lived it with sincerity and commitment.
However, as he writes in his Spiritual
Notes, “for some years” he felt the desire for religious consecration, for
an oblation that could be a total dedication of self to God.

6. Courageously, calling it divine will and
God’s victory over his attraction to “apostolic ministry, which is
overwhelmingly fulfilling for me and is highly esteemed,” he decided to enter
the Society of Jesus. It was December 14, 1875.

He wanted to do nothing else but God’s will.
“Whatever happens to me, I will take hold of it as your will and therefore I
shall not be disturbed,” he wrote at the beginning of a retreat on March 20,
1876. Blessed Arsenius then made first religious profession in 1877 at the age
of 28.

Because of his ‘ordinary’ commitment to study,
things went poorly enough for Blessed Arsenius to have to suspend his academic
activities. Transferred as Prefect in the College of Cremona in 1879 he
finished philosophy and then, in 1884, in Portoré in Istria he began to study
theology again, but without much success. He made the year of probation in
Lainz, Vienna, and then on August 15, 1888 he made solemn profession as a ‘formed
spiritual coadjutor.’ Esteemed by all, he continued his ministry as preacher,
confessor, catechist for young people, and as retreat director, above all for
communities of women religious.

7. In Venice, in the years between 1888 and
1890, Blessed Arsenius again met Pasqualina Giuseppina Fumagalli, now having
been dismissed from the Sisters of Notre Dame du Bon Secours, but continuing to
dress as a sister anyway. She had also begun a new
religious institute, calling it the Consolation Sisters, though without having
obtained permission from the respective bishops, gathering around herself a
group of young women, some of whom also had Blessed Arsenius for a spiritual
director. It was this complex relationship with Pasqualina, judged negatively
by the Jesuit superiors, that led to their decision to transfer Arsenius first
to Trento, then to Piacenza, and finally to ask him to leave the Society. After
a brief period of resistance, he was dismissed.

These were the years of the greatest upheaval. Alone,
without anything but a failure and judgment behind him that was surely
unflattering, who would not become closed off, isolated, and an embittered,
empty complainer?

And yet on April 25, 1892, Blessed Arsenius
arrived in Turin, once again willing to do the will of God that came to him
even in difficult circumstances and in decisions imposed upon him by others.
Presenting himself to the Archbishop Davide dei Conti Riccardi, he took on the
spiritual direction of the new Pious Institute of Mary Consolatrix, formed by a
group of sisters that had left Pasqualina Fumagalli. When perhaps it was the
time to gather up the efforts of youth and the joys of middle age, at the age
of forty-two, Blessed Arsenius took up this new path. Thus, for ten years
(1892-1902) he gave form, norms, and guidance to the new institute in its
presence in Turin and the later also in Milan, writing for them a Rule and
Constitutions.

Everything seemed to be moving toward a secure
harbor, but in the first general chapter of the institute, held in 1899, there
arose discord between the sisters in Milan and those in Turin, dissensions that
led the Archbishop of Milan, Blessed Andrea Carlo Ferrari, to replace all of
the superiors and to ask Blessed Arsenius to take a step back and give up the
direction of the institute. Uprooted again, once more the face of God’s will
was revealed amidst a painful rift.

8. Now fifty-three years old, after having
obtained the approval of various superiors, on June 21, 1902 Blessed Arsenius
began a new way of life, entering the novitiate of the Capuchin Friars Minor in
Lovere. This new and demanding state of life granted him also a new name:
Brother Arsenius of Trigolo. Even
though he entered at an older age, Blessed Arsenius made challenging choices.
The change of name was the easiest thing. Deeper was to put into practice what
he had said many times to the sisters: to ask the Lord each day for “the
practical love that is true charity in deeds and works.” (cf. Sermons for people’s missions)

Having made temporary vows, Blessed Arsenius
was sent to Bergamo as a spiritual guide for the young Capuchin students. Here,
except for a brief period away, he spent his final years of pastoral ministry,
where he also took care of the Third Order.

In 1909 he began to have health problems.
Transferred from the friary to infirmary, during the night of December 10,
1909, he died from a cardiac aneurysm. The impressive attendance by the people
at the funeral, celebrated with Franciscan simplicity, witnessed to the good
Blessed Arsenius had sown during his earthly life.

Daily prayer, the celebration of the Eucharist,
and the charitable acts toward so many in need had worked in Blessed Arsenius
that transformation that is granted to those who put all their trust in God and
in his living Word: to embrace silence, hiddenness, and forgiveness, never
holding on to anything for himself, whether the evil done to him or the good,
and to leave recompense to the Lord who
sees in secret.

9. Dear brothers, Blessed Arsenius of Trigolo
is added to the grand array of the saints and blesseds of the Order, each with
his own particular story. Blessed Arsenius, formed as both a Jesuit and a
Capuchin, shows us certain important elements of each spiritual tradition. To
be inspired by the desire to do everything for the greater glory of God is the
heart of the teaching of St. Ignatius, while in the grace of perfect joy in
bearing tribulation, injury, and slander, always thanking God, recognizing that
it is God who has loved us first, it is Francis who is teaching and forming. In
this double role, Blessed Arsenius reminds us friars that the first work to
fulfill is faith in Christ who alone gives glory to God and who can be brought
to the world only with joy.

May Blessed Arsenius obtain for all the friars,
and those of the Province of Lombardy in particular, a renewed commitment to
bringing the Gospel of Christ to the world, that it may know the Highest Good
and his Peace. By his intercession, may the Sisters of Mary Most Holy
Consolatrix remain always faithful in their works of charity.

Fraternally,

Br. Mauro Jöhri
General Minister OFM Cap.

Rome, 8
September 2017
Feast of the Nativity of Mary

* On September 20, 1870, the Piedmontese army,
breaking through a part of the old Aurelian Walls, entered Rome and thus joined
the last bastion of the Papal States to the newborn Italian State, recently
formed through the wars of Italian Unification guided by the Savoy dynasty.